PREMONITIONS
Helen stared at her chum for a moment and her laughing mouth turned
downward, lending an expression of momentary gravity to her merry
face.
“You don’t mean to say, Ruthie Fielding, that you are actually afraid
of Sol Bloomberg?”
Ruth laid down the pictures and for the moment her face reflected the
gravity of Helen’s.
“I _am_ afraid of Sol Bloomberg,” she told them simply. “Not that I
think that he can get the better of me in a long fight. I believe
that when it comes to a matter of endurance I have a far better
chance than Bloomberg to win.”
“You bet you have, especially when you consider your wonderful
support!” broke in Tom, with a grin.
“I am considering him,” said Ruth, with a grateful glance but no
relaxing of her gravity. “That’s one of the things that makes me
pretty sure of winning in a long race.
“But, oh, you don’t realize!” She leaned forward and cupped her
little fighting chin in one hand while she regarded her companions
with an intense earnestness. “It’s impossible for any one to
understand who isn’t situated as I am how many small annoyances,
little enough in themselves, but terrible when you group them all
together, a man like Bloomberg can perpetrate. He knows the picture
business through and through, he knows just how to hit in a vital
spot and just the time to do it. He knows, and Charlie Reid knows
too, that small delays mean actual loss in dollars and cents. He
knows that when a company of actors is worked up to acting pitch that
just some small delay or the introduction of a ludicrous incident
will sometimes completely ruin their morale. He knows—but there!” She
checked herself and looked a little embarrassed at her impassioned
flow of words. “I’m going on dreadfully and you both must think me
a regular kill-joy, but you asked me a question, Helen, and I’ve
answered it the best I know how. I _am_ afraid of Sol Bloomberg!”
And this fear was in no way lessened during the busy, interest-filled
days that followed.
Ruth might gradually have managed to forget Bloomberg had that man
not taken great pains to keep himself alive in her memory. The
threatening letter she had received from him just before the Charlie
Reid incident proved to be only the first of many.
In the beginning Ruth determined to ignore these sneering missives.
But when they continued to pour in upon her she laid the matter in
desperation before Tom, and that young gentleman took a prompt and
decisive hand in the game.
He wrote just one letter to Sol Bloomberg, and though Ruth never knew
exactly what the contents of that letter were, it seemed to have the
desired effect upon her enemy.
Bloomberg’s threatening missives ceased to come. But they had left
their poison in the air behind them and, day or night, Ruth could
never banish completely from her mind the vision of a malignant
Bloomberg, promising dire things should she go on with her plans and
undertake the filming of “The Girl of Gold.”
Lucky for Ruth and for Mr. Hammond’s hopes that hers was a fighting
spirit and that opposition such as Bloomberg’s only made her more
determined to succeed in spite of him.
It had been necessary for them to stay only one night in New York,
since Mr. Hammond, in eager anticipation of Ruth’s acceptance of
his proposition, anxious as he was to start the serious work of
production without further delay, accepted Tom’s terms without
question and immediately. He had already planned out all the details
of the trip, to which it remained only for Ruth to acquiesce.
On reaching Cheslow, reservations were made at once by Tom on the
train that would start the following morning for New York. The girls,
while in New York, had done all the necessary shopping—though Helen
had taken the heavy end of this undertaking, since Ruth was far too
absorbed in her plans and in the scenario of “The Girl of Gold” to
care much what she wore on the trip.
So on this particular evening Ruth was at work in her little study
at the Red Mill, methodically gathering up all the loose ends of her
affairs.
She was leaning over her desk, scanning again the pictures she had
selected of the points they were to visit along the Yukon River
when there was a slight rustling, and she looked around to see Aunt
Alvirah coming into the room.
“I had to come in and sit with you, my pretty, just for a little
while,” said the old woman, half apologetically. “I won’t see you
for so long and I never know when you go away on one of these trips
whether you’ll come back to your old Aunt Alvirah again, or whether
she’ll be here to see you, when you do.”
“Why, Auntie, what a dreadful thing to say!” Ruth was on her feet in
an instant and tenderly led the old woman to a chair. “You mustn’t
talk like that, you know,” taking the wrinkled old hand in both her
young ones and rubbing it gently, “or I won’t have the heart to go at
all!”
“Oh, yes, you will, my pretty. And I wouldn’t hold you back if I
could—I’m that proud of you! But it’s lonesome here at times, and
your uncle, my dear——”
“Oh, I know,” Ruth broke in quickly. “I know just how trying he can
be. But you mustn’t let him worry you, dear. It’s only his age that
makes him so disagreeable, and he really doesn’t mean half he says——”
“There’s the doorbell!” cried the old lady, as a shrill clamor woke
the echoes of the old house. “Oh, my back! and oh, bones! Let me go,
my pretty. I must answer it.”
“I’d like to see you,” mocked Ruth gayly, as she pushed the old woman
back into the chair with a firm and gentle hand. “It’s probably Tom,
anyway.”
Ruth started toward the door, but on the instant there came the click
of a latch and Tom’s cheery whistle sounded within the house.
“Right this way, Tommy-boy,” Ruth called. “Aunt Alvirah and I are
holding a last minute confab. Join us!”
Tom came in, jaunty and joyful.
“I’ve made reservations all the way through to Seattle, though we
have to change at Chicago,” he told Ruth, after greeting Aunt
Alvirah in his usual hearty way. “And, say, Ruthie, I’ve got a
surprise for you. I’ve reserved a compartment for you and Helen for
the whole trip.”
For a moment Ruth’s face radiated pleasure. Then it clouded again as
she asked anxiously:
“What reservations have you made for Tommy-boy?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter about him,” and Tom grinned. “He gets a lower
berth in the Pullman—and lucky enough not to pull an upper,” he
added, throwing his hat in one chair and himself in another. “The
train is just about packed to capacity. It’s the flyer, you know, and
mighty popular.”
“Then I don’t see how you managed to get a compartment,” Ruth said,
puzzled. “You would think they would all have been snapped up long
ago.”
“So they were—from Chicago out, at any rate,” said Tom. “But the
millionaire diamond king that had yours changed his plans at the last
minute and relinquished it. Thus my opportunity, which I grasped with
both fists, and then some.”
“Luxury, thy name is sweet!” sighed Ruth, and went on with her work
of gathering up loose ends.
“Where’s Helen?” asked Aunt Alvirah suddenly.
So quiet had the little old woman been, lost in the depths of the
great chair, that Ruth and Tom had almost forgotten her presence in
the room.
Now they both looked at her with the gentle consideration they always
reserved for the frail old lady.
“Helen’s at home with Chess,” said Tom, with a grin. “Holding hands
with him and sighing a last sad farewell.”
“It _is_ right hard on Chess,” said Aunt Alvirah gently. “In my day
young ladies didn’t keep their future husbands waiting around so
long. It don’t—well, it don’t seem quite fair.”
Ruth guessed that this was meant as a gentle rebuke to her as well as
to Helen. She flushed a little and bent still more intently over her
work.
It was Tom who broke the rather awkward silence.
“Oh, Chess doesn’t blame her,” he said easily. “Thinks she ought to
have all the fun coming to her before she has to settle down. His
chief worry is that he can’t go along with us. Poor old Chess, he
works too hard. Thing he needs is to chuck business for a time and
take a good long vacation.”
“When a man is to be married it’s right he should work hard” said
Aunt Alvirah, looking so prim and sweet that Tom got up and enfolded
her in a bear hug.
“The thing he ought to do, Auntie,” he said, resuming his seat and
stretching out his long legs comfortably before him, “is to be like
me and get himself interested in the movies. Then he can combine
business with pleasure and pleasure with business and everybody’s
happy!”
“I suppose so,” said Aunt Alvirah, with a gentle sigh. “But it wasn’t
so in my day, indeed it wasn’t!”
Not until Aunt Alvirah had gone to bed, complaining patiently of her
back and her bones, did Ruth broach the subject that was nearest her
heart.
She and Tom were alone, and for a long time nothing had been
said between them. They were in the habit of falling into these
comfortable silences. A smile touched the corners of Tom’s wide,
good-humored mouth as he watched Ruth neatly file the last few papers
on her desk.
When it was all done Ruth turned around and answered Tom’s smile in
kind.
“I don’t believe I’ve told you, Tommy-boy,” she said earnestly, “just
how much I appreciate the sacrifice you’ve made.”
“Sacrifice?” repeated Tom, understanding but pretending that he did
not.
“You know what I mean,” said Ruth gently. “It was big of you to give
your consent to my undertaking this for Mr. Hammond. Not every one
would have done that, under the circumstances, Tommy-boy.”
“Oh, I’m quite a remarkable fellow,” agreed Tom, with his cheery
grin. “But then, so are you a remarkable young lady, Ruth Fielding,”
he added gravely. “I don’t suppose any one understands what you are
doing better than I, or appreciates it more. I’m lucky,” with another
grin, just a bit rueful this time, “that you let me hang around at
all!”
But Ruth was suddenly very much in earnest. She leaned forward and
for just a moment let her hand rest lightly over Tom’s.
“Don’t ever say that again, Tommy-boy,” she said. “If I have
succeeded, so have you. You don’t know how much you have helped me.
Why, I just wouldn’t know how to go on without you!”
“As long as you feel that way about it, Ruth,” said Tom, very
sincerely touched, “then I don’t care—a lot—about anything else!”